By By Adrienne McKenzie
A group of touring bikes, cruisers and sport bikes took over the roads of Brewton, Flomaton and Atmore Saturday morning all in the name of Christ.
Christian motorcycle riders from Escambia County hosted an organizational rally and ride that began at Burnt Corn Park in Brewton, cruised into Atmore and created a circle back to David's Catfish House in Brewton.
According to Earl McKenzie, an organizer of the event, the goal of the event was to see how many bikers from the Escambia County area would be interested in creating a Christian motorcycle ministry.
"The purpose of the event was to see how much interest we would have in starting a Christian motorcycle ministry in Escambia County," McKenzie said. "I was extremely pleased with the turnout. I thought we may have 10-15 people show up, but we had 28. It was outstanding, I thought."
This organization began with McKenzie and Brian Lisenby of Brewton speaking with Jack Fitts, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Brewton.
"It was Brian Lisenby and myself who went to Jack Fitts at First Baptist Church of Brewton separately, we had not even talked and I didn't even know he had a bike," McKenzie said. "We asked brother Jack about starting a motorcycle ministry. We had a meeting about a month ago to set up this first ride. A few members of First Baptist Church and Alco Baptist Church planned this event and decided to open it up to all denominations so we'd have a bigger group. We didn't want it to just be a Baptist thing, we wanted it to be non-denominational. That's why we started at Burnt Corn Park and not at First Baptist Church, so people wouldn't be put off with it being at First Baptist to keep this as a non-denominational organization."
McKenzie said there were a few non-Baptist preachers who did participate in the event Saturday and he hopes to see more Christians become involved.
"We had a couple of pastors who rode in the ride Saturday, both of them were non-denominational pastors," he said. "We'll open up to any Christian biker who wants to join. We'll be having other rides and other events, things like that."
McKenzie said most of the riders were from the Brewton and East Brewton area, but any biker is welcome to join.
"Also, we would love to have interested bikers in Atmore join us," he said. "There weren't any Saturday, but we would love for them to join us. We'll be advertising our next ride so they are welcome to participate."
The group is in the process of coming up with a name for the organization and it will more than likely be affiliated with the Christian Motorcyclists Association.
"We're probably going to associate ourselves with CMA somehow and we'll come up with a name for our group," McKenzie said.
Plans for future meetings are also in the works, according to McKenzie.
"We are looking at the cards from the people who came Saturday and we will see when the best time for them to meet would be," he said. "We gave them some choices of when would be best for them to meet. We'll look at that and decide when we'll have the next event. We hope to participate in charity rides other people put on and hope to put on charity rides ourselves in the future to help with worthy causes. We haven't decided anything as far as dues. We didn't charge anybody anything to ride Saturday and the only cost for them was their gas and cost of food. We may not charge fees, but if we need money for postage or something like that, we'll collect money. We plan on having a monthly meeting at one of the restaurants in town. We want to have it at the same place and time every month so people can mark their calendar."
For more information on the Christian biker group, call 251-238-2899.